A Collection of Poetry, Essays, and Graphic Texts Produced by Students in Cultural Studies 340/English 379, Winter Term 2, 2013-14, at UBC’S Okanagan Campus
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A collection of poetry, essays, and graphic texts produced by students in Cultural Studies 340/English 379, Winter Term 2, 2013-14, at UBC’s Okanagan campus. May 2014 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Contact: [email protected] Contents p. 1 Introduction —David Jefferess p. 10 Juxtapenticton —Ali Duncan p. 17 Kelownialism and the Museum —Kelsey Millman p. 22 The Power of Naming —Katie Barker and Samantha Steenwyk p. 27 Utopia’s Imperialism —Kathryn Mckenzie p. 35 A Tale of Two Pandosies —Lauren Richardson p. 38 Postcards from the Past —Ali Young p. 42 The Bent Spike —Trystan Carter p. 63 The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth —Kayla Powell Introduction —David Jefferess This collection of essays, poems, and graphic The work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Bonita texts provides critical engagement with the way Lawrence, as well as other Indigenous and post- HERITAGE, HISTORY and COMMUNITY /anti-colonial scholars (including Mohandas IDENTITY are produced in Kelowna, Gandhi, Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Penticton and beyond. These works were Jeannette Armstrong and Chandra Mohanty) produced by students enrolled in a cross-listed showed us that while European colonialism Cultural Studies and English course titled aspired to be a global project of white ‘Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies,’ at supremacy, it was undertaken differently in UBC’s Okanagan campus in 2013-14. As a different historical moments and different course in postcolonial studies, throughout regions, and it was experienced differently in much of the term we examined colonialism as a different locales. Most of what we read—both complex and ongoing project. Our focus was on the theoretical essays and the works of fiction, the cultural aspects of European colonialism in poetry, and film—presented the experience of the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and South colonialism and the work of decolonization Asia, including the stories European colonists from the perspectives of colonized or formerly and settlers told about the ‘others’ they colonized people; a novel by Tsitsi ‘discovered’ and colonized, and the stories they Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), a personal essay by told about themselves. Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), a film by Ketan Mehta (India), poetry and experimental video We examined the racial and racist logic of the by Chris Bose (N’laka’pamux/Secwepemc). The rationale for European colonialism and the major project for the course invited students to language, images, and narratives used by the take up the concepts, approaches, and theories colonists to represent ‘exploration’ and that we derived from these teachings to ‘settlement.’ We sought to understand how the critically examine the representation of colonial cultural project of colonialism—the project of history in Kelowna or in their own communities. naming, defining, and categorizing people, places and things in a system of difference and In doing so, we encountered a troubling hierarchy—is one layer of colonialism, discontinuity, one that was foregrounded from intimately related to a political project of the very first class. The stories and theories control and subjugation and an economic presented in our readings took for granted the project of exploitation (Smith 96). As Bonita fact that colonialism was a violent project of Lawrence sums up the colonial project in domination, and that those who the European Canada, it was/is a “focused, concerted process colonists sought to ‘educate,’ exploit, or destroy of invasion and land theft” (26). resisted and adapted in a myriad of complex ways; yet, for many in the class, the stories, images, and theories of these VIOLENT 1 COLONIAL RELATIONS OF POWER were Heritage Museum, street names, heritage a revelation, of sorts, as the histories we have commemorations on ‘Knox mountain’, the learned through museums, monuments, and narrative of Father Pandosy as first settler, the years of formal education have taught us only Calgary Stampede, and the Last Spike heritage about DISCOVERY, EXPLORATION, site at Craigellachie. Students were asked to SETTLEMENT, and THE PIONEERING shape their project in response to a number of SPIRIT. The ‘C’ word, as Karen K. Kosasa focus questions: explains in her analysis of historical memory in museums and art galleries in Hawai’i, is absent • How does the particular example you from these sites of public memory. Kosasa have chosen represent the history and argues that these projects of memory seek to identity of the community with which it maintain the myth of innocence for the settler, is associated? keeping them “largely unaware of the existence • Whose perspectives and standpoint of colonialism and their participation in it” does the example reflect and how does (153). Lawrence foregrounds the way different this shape the way it produces an idea positions within colonial relations of power of history and identity? shape one’s understanding of history: “As • How is the ongoing experience of history is currently written, from outside colonialism represented by, or reflected Indigenous perspectives, we cannot see in, the example? colonization as colonization” (26). ‘Canadian’ • Does the example reflect a form of accounts of settlement and ‘contact’ with (post)colonial melancholia? Indigenous peoples produce a largely benevolent and cooperative relationship, never While the project did require academic writing, mentioning racism or acknowledging genocide students chose to either write an academic (24). essay or to engage with their topic in more creative or publicly accessible ways (blogs, videos, children’s books, etc.), with an accompanying critical/theoretical rationale. This collection includes the projects that best responded to the focus questions. There were a few projects that veered from this focus; they were excellent projects, but did not quite fit the theme for this collection. This collection includes a collaboratively written academic essay (Barker and Steenwyk), a graphic essay (Millman), postcards (Young), a satiric poem in rhyming couplets with video documentation of a site-specific performance (Richardson), and four experimental poems that manipulate found text (Carter, Duncan, Drawing inspiration and guidance from the Mackenzie, and Powell). These four poems are course material, students were asked to inspired—to varying degrees—by Mercedes critically engage with specific examples of Eng’s poem, “Knuckle Sandwhich”, from her PUBLIC HERITAGE; thus this collection collection Mercenary English (2013), which we includes engagements with historical narratives studied in the course. of the ‘settlement’ of Penticton, the Okanagan 2 illuminate and alter the dominant narratives of Eng manipulates and juxtaposes text from historical memory and identity in the Okanagan police briefings, newspaper articles, shampoo today. Many of the authors would situate ads, and academic essays to engage with the themselves as beneficiaries of this dominant murders and disappearances of Aboriginal culture, and as part of the colonial system they women from the downtown eastside in are seeking to expose; these contributions do Vancouver, the ‘Highway of Tears’ in northern not seek to “criticize”. They are engagements, B.C., and across Canada. While mainstream meant to foster dialogue and self-reflection and media often stigmatizes these missing and to inspire other forms of engagement. murdered women as living ‘high risk’ lifestyles, Eng’s poem reveals how this violence needs to In the remainder of this Introduction, I provide be understood as colonial. She presents this a brief survey of the critical context that violence against Aboriginal women as informs the project, and many of the embedded in other forms of violence and contributions in this collection. inequality, such as the normalization of women as objects of beauty in Canada (and particularly the way this objectification is manifested in terms of race and social class), the Western will to ‘save’ Muslim women from the veil, and the honour and value accorded to (white male) Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. A quotation from an essay by Yasmin Jiwani becomes a refrain within the poem: “The visibility accorded to one expression or manifestation of / violence and the invisibility of the other are interlocked. One / supports and depends upon the other.” Eng does not so much present an argument in this poem— seeking to persuade or convince—as provoke For Kelowna’s centennial in 2005, CHBC an altered sense of reality by reorganizing and produced a short documentary celebrating re-contextualizing the ‘normal’ of the dominant Kelowna’s history. Entitled, “Kelowna: The culture, revealing its fractures, its hypocrisy, First 100 Years,” the film highlights key and its basis in white patriarchal supremacy. elements in the development of Kelowna’s She makes visible forms of violence that are identity, from IRRIGRATION to LAKE normalized, ignored, or denied, and she makes TRANSPORTATION to THE REGATTA to them visible in their relation to structures of the POPULATION GROWTH beginning in the power and privilege. late 1990s. The narrator opens with the claim that the first European settlers found the In class, we did not read Eng’s poem as a Okanagan as a “dust-bowl,” and proceeds to cultural example upon which we could apply explain that through hard work, ingenuity, and and test critical theories. Rather, we sought to determination, over time the (settler) people of read it as a way of engaging with these Kelowna have